Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Live Guitar Music from Newman & Oltman on WWFM

Live music-making is a rare bird in time of COVID. All the more reason to celebrate a recital by the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo today on The Classical Network, on a special Noontime Concert, coming to you live from Mercer County Community College’s Kelsey Black Box Theatre, adjacent to the WWFM studios.

Michael Newman and Laura Oltman will perform music from their new album devoted to works of renowned Cuban composer Leo Brouwer – including a selection from “The Book of Imaginary Beings,” a piece commissioned by Raritan River Music and written specifically for them. “The Book of Imaginary Beings” is also the name of the album, now available on the MusicMasters label.

Also on the program will be Brouwer’s “Música Incidental Campesina” and two selections from “Beatlerianas” – “She’s Leaving Home” and “Fool on the Hill.” In addition, the duo will perform music by Enrique Granados, Isaac Albéniz, Manuel de Falla, Paul Moravec, and Jay Ungar (the popular “Ashokan Farewell”). The concert will be broadcast at 12 p.m. EDT.

Newman and Oltman, longtime friends of the station, are founders and artistic directors of the Raritan River Music Festival, which last month marked its 31st season (this year, executed totally online). They are also founders and artistic directors of the New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes. The duo will celebrate its 30th year as ensemble-in-residence at Mannes College of Music this season.

Please remember that we are coming up on the end of our fiscal year. If you enjoy the music, please do what you can to renew your membership, become a new member, or make an additional gift before June 30. Our survival, and to what degree we are able to rebuild, depends to large extent on the dedication and generosity of our listener-members.

I think we can all use a touch of normalcy and a sense of stability. Enjoy the concert, and thank you for your support of WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!

https://wwwfm.secureallegiance.com/wwfm/WebModule/Donate.aspx?P=DEFAULT&PAGETYPE=PLG&CHECK=vOU2bz5JCWmgCDbf53nm9ezWDeZ%2BeA1M&fbclid=IwAR1ovFGqc9n3zFh-lM0Tk14jhcqYu_SIyjedie-LiBKFI2JpJq7hnp5eerc

June 19, 2020
“Meteor” Movie Review A Disasterpiece!

Lord, do I hate “Meteor.” Despite having seen it under optimal conditions – at the late, lamented Loewe’s Astor Plaza in New York City, back in 1979 – it has persisted in my memory as one of the most excruciating couple of hours I have ever passed in a theater.

Now, 41 years later, thanks to Roy Bjellquist, I bite down hard on a strip of leather and re-subject myself to the torment, having been invited for the third week in a row to guest co-host on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” I hope you’ll join me, as I join Roy, in offering exhaustive background and sardonic insights into this stunning misfire – a disaster movie so disastrous that it cured even the most undiscriminating audiences of their mania for imperiled airplanes, capsized ocean liners, earthquake-ravaged cities, and blazing skyscrapers, until the advent of CGI. Falling close on the heels of “Hurricane” and “The Concorde… Airport ’79,” “Meteor” ensured that the genre went out in a blaze of ignominy.

An all-star cast (led by Sean Connery), a comet, a five-mile asteroid, and a five-dollar budget add up to a recipe for disaster! This had to be the blackest mark on the resume of even the lowliest intern. Even as a viewer, I still bear the scars.

If that’s not incentive enough for you to punch us up, I don’t know what is. I hope you’ll join Roy and me for the next “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” The show will be live-streamed on Facebook this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT. It may not be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it still promises to be meatier than “Meteor.”

https://www.facebook.com/events/2765874766978123/

To quote a wide-eyed Karl Malden, “That meteor is five miles wide, and it’s definitely gonna hit us!!!”

June 18, 2020
Stravinsky Birthday A Celebration in Spring

“Igor Stravinsky was born in the spring and died in the spring. In a sense, he lived his whole life in a springtime of creativity. All his music is spring-like, newly budding, rooted in the familiar past, yet fresh and sharp, with that stinging, paradoxical combination of the inevitable and the unexpected.”

On Stravinsky’s birthday, enjoy this brief appreciation, narrated by Leonard Bernstein, assembled not long after Stravinsky’s death:

I especially got a kick out of the cowboy reception, around the 9-minute mark.

Also on this date, in 1908, Stravinsky’s “Fireworks” was first performed, at the wedding of Rimsky-Korsakov’s daughter, Nadezhda, to Stravinsky’s professional rival, Maximillian Steinberg. The wedding took place a few days before Rimsky-Korsakov’s death. Stravinsky received the commission for his breakthrough ballet, “The Firebird,” in part because Serge Diaghilev heard the piece and was impressed with his orchestration.

Stravinsky conducts “Fireworks,” from his Russian nationalist period, in Japan:

Stravinsky, in his last public appearance, conducts his neoclassical masterpiece, “Pulcinella”:

Stravinsky conducts one of my favorite works from his serial period, “Agon”:

Stravinsky’s final masterpiece, “Requiem Canticles,” was first performed at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1966. Against expectations, Stravinsky again conducted. The performance is led here by his assistant, Robert Craft:

“Requiem Canticles” would be repeated at Stravinsky’s funeral five years later.

As a bonus, here’s an article I wrote on Stravinsky in Princeton for the Trenton Times in 2016:

https://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/2016/12/classical_music_puo_pugc_so_pe.html

Happy birthday, Igor Stravinsky, and happy anniversary, Maximillian and Nadezhda Steinberg (née Rimskaya-Korsakova)!

June 17, 2020
Bloomsday 2020 Goes Virtual Thanks to COVID

June 16 is Bloomsday, the date on which the events in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” are supposed to have taken place in 1904. Ordinarily, the day is marked by celebrations world-wide, as Joyceans get together to reenact, eat, play music, drink, and of course read.

Naturally, in the time of COVID, few sensible folk are willing to take the risk. To circumvent these unusual circumstances, the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia – which annually cordons off the 2000 block of Delancey Street to accommodate live readings and musical performances from Joyce’s magnum opus – will this year move its celebration online. The virtual edition of the immersive Bloomsday 2020 will be live-streamed today from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. EDT, at https://rosenbach.org/bloomsday/.

If I am allowed a few personal observations, it took me the better part of a year to wade through “Ulysses,” and I probably never would have made it without the Rosenbach’s help. I had twice tried to navigate the imposing text, my first attempt dating back to high school, but it was only thanks to a Rosenbach seminar, led by Joyce scholar Carol Loeb Shloss – a superb guide – that I was able to attain a greater understanding of the work and get myself safely to port. I still find Joyce to be infuriating, at times, though I have to admit my fury is now tempered with respect.

Incidentally, Joyce was a great music-lover, and quotations from opera and popular song infuse his prose in much the same way they do the works of Charles Ives.

Here are a couple of related songs:

Samuel Barber’s “Solitary Hotel,” on a text from “Ulysses”

Joyce’s own “Bid Adieu to Girlish Days”

June 16, 2020
Free Opera Week at the Met: Glass, Verdi & More

Good Lord! Two Philip Glass operas in one week! I offer this mild oath in tribute to the monotheistic pharaoh at the center of Glass’ “Akhnaten.”

Even if you think Minimalism drives you up a wall, try to catch the Metropolitan Opera production, which features an uncanny performance by Princeton University alumnus Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role, impressive sets, evocative costumes, and plenty of jugglers (!).

The Met will also offer two – count ‘em – two Rossini operas, “Armida” and “Semiramide.” The Met’s Rossini has been among the more gratifying revelations for me since the COVID-era streaming began. It sounds a little silly to state the obvious, but he’s a very theatrical composer!

Oh yeah, and there will be two by Verdi, as well, including “La Forza” with Leontyne Price.

The Met continues to make good on its pledge to stream free opera for the duration of the house’s shutdown. Each opera is accessible for approximately 23 hours, starting every day around 7 p.m. EDT. Handel’s “Rodelinda” streams through 6 p.m. today, at metopera.org.

Here’s a complete schedule of this week’s offerings. You’ll find teasers and bonus materials when following the link:

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-14/

Monday, June 15
Rossini’s Armida
Starring Renée Fleming, Lawrence Brownlee, John Osborn, Barry Banks, and Kobie van Rensburg, conducted by Riccardo Frizza. From May 1, 2010.

Tuesday, June 16
Rossini’s Semiramide
Starring Angela Meade, Elizabeth DeShong, Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov, and Ryan Speedo Green, conducted by Maurizio Benini. From March 10, 2018.

Wednesday, June 17
Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride
Starring Susan Graham, Plácido Domingo, and Paul Groves, conducted by Patrick Summers. From February 26, 2011.

Thursday, June 18, and Friday, June 19
Verdi’s La Forza del Destino
Starring Leontyne Price, Giuseppe Giacomini, Leo Nucci, and Bonaldo Giaiotti, conducted by James Levine. From March 24, 1984.

Saturday, June 20
Philip Glass’s Akhnaten
Starring Dísella Lárusdóttir, J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Aaron Blake, Will Liverman, Richard Bernstein, and Zachary James, conducted by Karen Kamensek. From November 23, 2019.

Sunday, June 21
Philip Glass’s Satyagraha
Starring Rachelle Durkin, Richard Croft, Kim Josephson, and Alfred Walker, conducted by Dante Anzolini. From November 19, 2011.

June 15, 2020

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